PicoBlog

It’s eighty years ago today since Anne Frank went into hiding. Eighty years since she piled on layers and layers of clothing, strapped on her school backpack, and trudged through the rain to her hiding place, leaving behind freedom, her bed, her home, and everything she knew for a physically caging existence over her father’s pectin and spice business. If Anne was still alive today, she would be ninety-three years old.

In 1978, music promoters Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus started the independent record label Factory Records in Manchester, England. It wasn’t long before the label was earning a legendary reputation for releasing culturally significant albums (Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division and Power, Corruption, and Lies by New Order, among many others) and for their unique approach to what they released and how they did it. The resulting body of work, built over decades of activity, is an instructive model for artists, metalabels, and creative groups of all kinds on how to be prolific, how to have fun, how to make a lasting cultural impact, and the power of collective worldbuilding.

Well, hello! I hope 2023 is treating you very well. I’m here today with five of my favorite dexterity games, and I’m excited to just dive straight into the good stuff. But first, definitions: A dexterity game is any game that requires physical coordination. It might require you to flick pieces, to build and stack pieces, or control pieces with a magnet. While it’s absolutely not a style of game for everyone, it’s something that brings me a lot of joy in the world of games.

 I love short-form podcasts. You can listen to a lot of them in a short period of time and learn a lot, or just be entertained. Some podcasts drag on for over an hour to two hours. Have they ever heard of the EDIT button?  I can listen to these short-form podcasts while I'm making coffee, or toasting my Dave's killer whole-grains and seeds bread, or even brushing my teeth, which done right should take about two minutes.

(Above: Jon Micheal Hill in a publicity photo by Patrick Eccelsine for the CBS television series Elementary in which he costarred for seven seasons as Detective Marcus Bell.) Last summer around this time Jon Michael Hill was starring as Martin Luther King, Jr., in The Mountaintop by Katori Hall at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles A year later he is now co-starring as Conrad Hensley in writer and producer David E.

Politico’s Heidi Przybyla is one of my favorite journalists. So when she ran a story this past Tuesday headlined, “Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration,” I stopped what I was doing to read it. And then I wanted to know still more. Heidi writes about Trump, “In a December campaign speech in Iowa, he said ‘Marxists and fascists’ are ‘going hard’ against Catholics. ‘Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that’s fair and equitable’ and that will ‘investigate all forms of illegal discrimination.

We are entering week three of spring training and there have been a few rounds of roster “cuts” from big league camp. With guys set to come back from the WBC over the next week or so, we might see more prospects reassigned to minor league camp. So far though, there have been quite a few of the younger guys flashing their potential during games this spring. Bryan Mata Mata is the highest rated pitching prospect in the Red Sox system, which he showed this spring before being optioned to AAA Worcester on Sunday.

It was when I saw Iyanla Vanzant tie a head wrap on her head in a vaguely regal configuration, don a white robe, and sit down in front of LisaRaye’s family to declare herself and them queens that I decided the tv show was not that bad. I remember Iyanla from when she used to show up on Oprah’s show, when I watched it in high school. She has the round, plummy voice of a Black actress and something about her smile, about the way she enunciated her words as if calling to the farthest seats in the theater, that made me distrust her.

Howdy, clowns! At the end of last week’s newsletter about jelly bean cassoulet, I teased something about an event happening in Chicago on October 4. And…here’s the reveal: My long-time friend John Carruthers and I are working on another pop-up, for his rogue pizza operation, Crust Fund Pizza! The event is taking place this coming Monday at The Kedzie Inn (4100 N. Kedzie), at 5 P.M. John started Crust Fund Pizza during the pandemic, and basically the gist of it is that he’ll post a “theoretical” menu on Instagram once a month, and followers will send him a DM to see if there’s any slots available.